He pointed out that the findings "closely paralleled those of a study by Volkow and colleagues in human subjects that was published in the March 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association."
"Collectively, these studies show that modafinil has similar behavioral and pharmacological effects to stimulant-type drugs of abuse, such as cocaine," he wrote.
"These data indicate that modafinil has the potential to be abused or produce dependence," Murnane said. "Accordingly, closer monitoring of the modafinil supply and abuse patterns may be warranted."
In June 2010, when the European Medicines Agency recommended restricting the use of modafinil for the treatment of narcolepsy only, on Pharmalot, Ed Silverman said the issue to watch was what this meant for Cephalon's Nuvigil. For the moment, EMA may have given Cephalon a boost, "especially since the FDA keeps delaying approval to use Nuvigil for jet-lag disorder and studies for other indications have either flopped or will take quite awhile to complete," he wrote.
"A similar step to restrict Nuvigil, of course, would make it harder to broaden the Nuvigil market," he pointed out, and noted that the drug's label states: "Psychiatric adverse experiences have been reported in patients treated with modafinil. Modafinil and armodafinil (NUVIGIL) are very closely related. Therefore, the incidence and type of psychiatric symptoms associated with armodafinil are expected to be similar to the incidence and type of these events with modafinil."
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